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In Reply to: Re: So how did they sound? Complete the experiment! nt posted by audioengr on January 22, 2007 at 17:48:56:
As it evidently is in yours: "The files are always the same."RUR is only one aspect of the MP; another is the playing from flashdrive.
Follow Ups:
HowdyGetting data reliably is much simper than they purport. Playing from solid state memory is also common place.
I don't have any idea how the player sounds, but the technical descriptions of the player given by the principles in the company are are ridiculous. They spend lots of energy solving non problems with Rube Goldberg solutions that presumably cost money to build into their product. This indicates that their engineers are lacking a degree of technical sophistication. They may well have a good sounding device, but if they do it's more of an accident than by design, at least given the information they publish here and at their site.
No matter if they are obfuscating or just lucky I wouldn't give them the price of their product even if it does sound great. I'd much rather support some of the many of engineers who can talk reasonably about their own well designed and great sounding products.
I'm up for a shootout at 1/3th the cost - anytime.
...because if the technical philosophy behind it strikes you as unconventional you "wouldn't give them the price of their product even if it does sound great."Pity... your loss.
HowdyLet me be clearer: If it sounded a heck of a lot better than anything else I heard at it's price I might get it. But it can't for the reasons stated below. I'd be happy to be proven wrong and I'll listen when I get an opportunity and will eat crow here and publicly if I'm wrong.
The technical philosophy behind it isn't merely unconventional: As presented here it's bad engineering. There is more than one way to not excel at engineering: You can overbuild a bridge more easily than under building it. Fortunately when you overbuild you just waste money and other resources. This unit costs too much based on the problems they've claimed to solve because there are simpler more effective solutions.
For those that missed it, below please find the technical info in question:
-Ted
...but rather on notional adherence to what I call conventional theory, what you call accepted engineering practice?That's interesting.
Here we have a device that, to my ears, in preliminary trials, way outperforms some much (much!) more expensive units that *do* conform, yet, "This unit costs too much based on the problems they've claimed to solve because there are simpler more effective solutions."
Huh!
Hey, did I quote you correctly here? The first time I, cut & pasted your words, but somehow managed to get it wrong. (!)
Clarke - I understand what Ted is saying and I have to say I agree with him, speaking as another seasoned engineer. I believe it could have been produced at a much lower price. I suppose it was almost built "mil-spec" to be impressive and believe me, the hardware is impressive looking. My believe is that these one-box computer server/players will soon be a thing of the past as the Intels, Apples, and Microsofts finally succeed in integrating the PC into the "digital home".
...so too could the NAIM, the Wadia, the EMM, the dCS... the Mercedes, the Maserati...Your statement is a truism.
As for your beliefs about PCs, I've heard some of the results and remain unimpressed.
Clark - Maybe at next years THE Show... BTW, one of your PF guys has my Off-Ramp I2S and is comparing it to his Squeezebox and his DAC-1 right now.
even if you are right they are not just lucky having designed the Melos gear, Pipedreams speakers, Scaena speakers, etc, all of it excellent or better. That's too coincidental to be true. By the way, I admit to be quite non-technical(except functionally sometimes) but if reading correctly is so easy why don't computers read CDs the same way as players(is it just speed). I've been told computers do things like multiple reads and that data CDs have redundant data on them for alternate places to get data if the first reads fail. Is this true?
HowdyI don't know much about the products you mention but they don't sound like they involve software, error correction, or even computers... Expertise in one engineering discipline don't always make you an expert in another. I'm an expert software engineer and I understand digital hardware pretty well (and have done a modicum of design there) but my analog hardware design skills are non-existent.
Anyway:
Redbook CDs have a different format than CD ROM. CD ROM has more error correction, BUT Redbook's error correction isn't that bad (a few uncorrectable errors / disc) which tho WAY too high for storing computer data or programs is (barely) adequate for music. I.e. both have redundant data which allow correcting the kinds of errors (and missing data) expected in practice. It is true that at times reading a disc starting a little early (or late) or a little closer or the center of the disc (or to the outer edge) can sometimes get you a cleaner read. But if the number of uncorrectable errors is only a few per disk anyway, what's the point when just playing audio? (When reading data or programs it's, of course, very important.)
In any case there are other computer based players which do "exact" reading and as mentioned in other posts on this thread we can compare the data with the Memory player to see that both are working. My point is merely that the problem is a solved problem and that the Nova Physics solution is needlessly complicated when there is already hardware/firmware that demonstrably works fine.
Also there are plenty of audio CD transports which use computer CD transports internally, but rereading isn't often required to get clean data.
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